


This Maple Burn Itself Away

by athena_crikey



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Gen, Morse's nascent alcohol issues, Relationship Confusion, Thursday family tension, unrecognised PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suddenly she’s not standing here providing the witty one-sided banter in a limping conversation with her dad’s awkward bagman, she’s behaving like an insensitive child to a man who’s just lost his father. (Post Home)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Maple Burn Itself Away

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a fun romp with Joan and Thursday. Then Morse crawled in and it all went downhill from there.

Sunday lunch is an unpredictable meal. As the only day all the Thursdays are guaranteed to have off, it’s generally reserved for running errands, household chores and day trips. Sunday dinner is the one night of the week Fred insists on his children’s presence, but often as not they’re absent until washing-up time.

Today it’s just him and Joan and a plate of ham and peas, with last night’s left-over jam rolls to follow. Sam is out in town with Win, trying to convince her that he needs new trousers more than new sheets. Fred expects them to come home with both, as long as Sam agrees to go in 50/50 on the trousers.

The ham is good – smooth texture and smoky flavour – but he finds himself unable to enjoy it. This is the first natural alone time he’s had with Joan since Vince Kaspar grassed on her, and even if he doesn’t disapprove of her choice he can’t let her silence go unaddressed. 

“Morse got back last night,” he begins neutrally, speaking to his plate rather than his daughter. He picks up a piece of ham with his fork, pauses. “When d’you think you’ll see him again?” He eats the ham, a picture of naturalness. 

“Whenever he picks you up next, I expect,” replies Joan matter-of-factly without looking up. She places a jam roll neatly on a desert plate, watching for a moment in anticipation as it oozes, before picking up her fork. 

Thursday frowns, fork and act of disinterest both forgotten. “That’s a bit cold – lad’s just lost his father.” 

Joan glances up, eyebrows rising. “He’s your bagman – take him out for drinks or something.” She mops up the spilt jam in a neat manoeuvre and pops a slice of cake into her mouth. 

“Given the other night,” says Thursday heavily, pretense abandoned altogether now, “I would have thought he might at least merit a casserole – cold pie, maybe.”

Joan’s apparent puzzlement intensifies. “The other – what, for walking me home? That’s a bit –”

“I know about the Moonlight Rooms, Joan,” interrupts Thursday, putting his fork down with an angry clatter. Joan freezes, mouth half-open. “You don’t have to lie – although that you’d think you need to go to this length to cover up a date with Morse –”

“Morse,” spits Joan, as though they had been talking about someone else this whole time. “You think I’ve been going out with Morse?” Her face is an odd mix of confusion and disbelief. The complete lack of guilt or embarrassment makes Thursday pause.

“Well, haven’t you?” he asks, honestly. 

“Dad! I don’t even know his first name! You thought – I was there with Morse?” Joan makes a noise between a snort and a guffaw, then breaks out laughing. He stares at her, completely unnerved. 

“Poor Dad,” she says, finishing, and pats his arm in a pitying kind of way. “Have you been fretting away about it all week?”

“No,” he says, with belated dignity, and straightens himself up. “Of course not. I’d not –”

“Wherever did you come up with that?” she railroads right over him, now in thoroughly good humour. “Unless – did he say so?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.

Thursday blinks, feeling very lost. “What, Morse? No – he said you’d been there with a works do. Never you mind where I heard it from. And anyway, what’s wrong with Morse?” he asks, quick to change the subject. 

“Dad, he’s the squarest man I know. He’s practically your age inside.”

“Nothing wrong with that. You don’t one of these flashy young lads with a motorcycle and a leather jacket smoking French cigarettes. Your usual type, in other words.” As he says it, the idea that she would have been there with Morse suddenly seems ridiculous, just as a dream can turn from vividly real to clearly nonsensical in moments. 

“Nice,” she retorts, getting up and taking her plate with her towards the kitchen.

“Regardless, you should stop by to thank the lad. It would do him good to see a familiar face, other than mine. He’s going through a rough patch, Joan.”

He hears her sigh, then the clink of her plate on the counter. “Alright. Fine. Where does he live?”

“I’ll write the address down for you. And you can take the potato and leek soup in the fridge; your mum said she can make something else for tomorrow.”

Joan pops back into the room, eyes narrow. “How long have you been planning this, Dad?” she asks suspiciously.

Thursday doesn’t look up, starting in on his jam roll with equanimity. “How long is a piece of string?” The jam squirts out the end as Joan makes an irritated noise and storms off to dig the soup out of the refrigerator.

\-----------------------------------------------------

The man who eventually opens the building door for Joan resembles Morse in the same way that paintings resemble their subjects: the colour, the features, the clothes are all similar but all equally have a slight, eerie wrongness to them. In Morse’s case, it’s the fact that he’s clearly wretchedly hung over. 

“Wow,” she says, staring up at him with wide eyes. “You look absolutely ruined.”

Morse blinks slowly – Joan can’t help but wonder if he’s hoping she might disappear – and pulls a hand through his uncombed hair. “Miss Thursday,” he says, sounding like someone’s been at his throat with industrial-grade sandpaper. That’s as far as he manages, brow furrowing as he stares at her in complete confusion. 

Joan takes over to spare them both the awkwardness. “Sorry, that was rude of me. I came to thank you – for the other night. Last week, really at the Moonlight Rooms. You brought me home, even though I’m sure you wanted to stay and investigate more.”

“Inspector Thursday told me to,” shrugs Morse. The movement makes the many wrinkles on his shirt stretch, like a flag caught by a sudden breeze. He’s either wearing the shirt for the second day, or he slept in his clothes; the latter, she suspects from the similar state of his jacket and trousers. 

“I don’t have the sense that you always do what you’re told,” she says wryly. 

He cants his head to the side, hooking one arm loosely over his chest so that his hand catches the opposite wrist and twists his lips upwards, creating the shadow of a smile. “Family’s important.”

Those two words kick the wind right out of her. Suddenly she’s not standing here providing the witty one-sided banter in a limping conversation with her dad’s awkward bagman, she’s behaving like an insensitive child to a man who’s just lost his father. 

It’s just so easy to … tune Morse out. Turn him into part of the furniture. He’s so outside her frame of reference – quiet, self-effacing and conservative. As Dad irritatingly pointed out, the complete opposite of the blokes who draw her attention. 

And now his father is dead and he’s alone here in Oxford. She tries, just for an instant, to imagine that, imagine herself without Mum and Sam to help her through losing Dad – and stops. Because that hurts too much, and it won’t help anyone.

“I’m sorry,” she says, voice soft. And then, feeling her throat start to close up, she shoves out her hands to display the bag hanging from them with its thermos inside. “I brought soup – potato and leek. Should I put it in your fridge?” 

Morse stares at her for several seconds, then nods dazedly. “Alright.” He shuffles around in the entranceway and begins climbing the narrow stairs without another word, one straight arm supporting his weight on the handrail. He’s limping quite badly, she realises immediately, favouring his right leg. 

“What happened?” she asks, following.

“Inspector Thursday didn’t tell you?” he asks, breathing hard; it occurs to her that this was probably not the opportune moment for a conversation.

“We don’t talk about work. Not usually. The Moonlight Rooms was different – that was personal. Was it the Kaspars?” She knows it couldn’t have been as soon as she asks it; Dad would never let that go, and he hasn’t been on the war path. 

“No.” Morse reaches the top of the stairs and pauses, fumbling in his pocket for the keys. He leans his head on the door as he tries to catch his breath. “There was a woman; she killed three people for a romance she had constructed in her head. When we came to arrest her, she shot me.” He jams the key in the lock with a shaking hand, fighting with it. 

Joan freezes on her stair, rocking back and almost losing her balance. The sharp brevity of his words shocks her, but more so the simple factuality of them. It would take all night to wheedle half as much information from Dad, assuming she knew what she was looking for, and even then it would end in black moods all around. She swallows thickly, staring at the twin lines of his shoulder blades, the way they scythe in and out as he breathes. 

“Are you alright?” she asks, half-reaching towards him, hampered by the soup’s bag and Morse’s hyper-active sense of propriety. 

“I’ll manage; it’s not serious.” He opens the door and limps in, jerking the keys with him as he goes. He crosses the room in a straight line and sits down in the first chair he comes to, eyes closed and jaw clenched. After a second he points without looking towards his right. “The fridge is through there. Sorry, I would show you…”

“That’s okay, I’m an expert at locating fridges.” Joan shuts the front door and steps in, looking around at Morse’s flat as she does so. It’s a small bed-sit, bedroom portion partially divided by a half-wall on her right, and the kitchen portion by another half-wall to her left. The main sitting area is mostly empty except for a cheap table, a couple of similarly cheap chairs and two book cases. These hold most of Morse’s possessions including a record player and LPs, cookware, some bowls and dishes, a few decorative items apparently shoved in at random, and of course books. 

It’s also frigid – either the heating is broken, or Morse is unwilling or unable to afford to turn it on very high. He’s jammed rags in the windows between the sashes and the sills and left his coat on the back of the chair – although the latter might just be untidiness. 

She pads through to the kitchen, tiny enough to not have the space for most of its own equipment, and opens the fridge. It’s empty except for some margarine, half a head of browning lettuce wrapped in Saran Wrap, a few bottles of beer, and some half-eaten tins. She nudges aside the lettuce to make room for the soup thermos; a couple of the leaves detach themselves in an ultimately fruitless attempt at escape. 

Joan shuts the fridge with her hip and steps around the dividing wall into the sitting room, savouring the notion of someone who actually answers questions. “What happened to the woman?” 

Morse looks over at her, mostly recovered from the trip up the stairs. He stares at her with dull eyes for a few seconds longer than it should take to come up with an answer; he’s clearly not operating on all cylinders. “She’s dead. She was shot by another officer on the scene; he came in as she was aiming at me, and tried to stop her.”

It’s the excuse that gives it away. “It was Dad, wasn’t it?” She raises her eyebrows, crossing over to stand beside him. He tilts his head up sharply, winces, and looks down again. “He never talks about it. The people who get hurt. The people he helps. You mean a lot to him, and he didn’t say anything about it – about this.”

Morse’s cheeks turn a pale shade of pink, but he shrugs lopsidedly. “He wants to protect your family from all the … the darkness in the job. That’s worth a lot.” Although he’s speaking quietly, he asserts it emphatically, with more certainty than she’s ever known him to employ. There’s also, absolutely unintentionally Joan is sure, a strain of envy in his voice. She sits down on the chair beside him.

“That wasn’t your experience?” she asks, aware that she’s on thin ice. But Morse is very off; she’s not sure he really should be on his own in a freezing flat with only half a head of lettuce and a thermos of soup for company, and talking might do him good. And… she wants to know.

“My father was a cab driver,” he answers, rather flatly. “There wasn’t anything to leave on the hall table.”

“And your mother?” asks Joan, trying to imagine what kind of woman Morse’s mother must be. She imagines someone kind, withdrawn, honest. Red hair, like her son’s, with an old-fashioned sense of style. 

“She died when I was twelve,” answers Morse, and Joan feels her breath catch in her throat; it feels like cold fingers have wrapped themselves around her neck and squeezed. Her image of Morse’s mother vanishes like smoke in the wind. Morse goes on without noticing. “My parents had divorced when I was quite young; I lived with my mother until her death, and after with my father, step-mother and half-sister.”

Joan swallows the lump in her throat. “What was he like?”

Morse turns himself to rest his elbows on the table, looking at the wall rather than at her. “He had a hard life, without the resources to make good choices, but all the ability to make poor ones. He tried his best with me, in his own way, when I was younger. And I did too, God knows, as much as a child can to please an adult. I learned to shoot and fish, went to the local fair, helped with the car, learned a good chunk of Macaulay’s _Lays of Ancient Rome_ by heart.” Morse folds his hands together and rests his forehead on them, eyes closed. His voice, when it comes again, is gruffer and thicker.

“And as I got older he started drinking more, and spent more time meeting bookies in pubs while I waited in the car, or went to the races instead of the shops, and I went along with that too and didn’t tell Gwen – my step-mother – when she asked. Until he lost his license, and didn’t need the excuse of taking me out. And then nothing I did made an impact on him, while every single thing I did drove Gwen up the wall. So I left as soon as I could, and didn’t look back. And I haven’t, until now.”

He raises his head and knocks it gently against his knuckles, brow furrowed with pain. He’s caught in the momentum of the story, Joan realises, trapped in a snare of memories and emotions, unable to stop. “The doctor told me to talk to him when I was there – at the end. I could have said anything – told him I was there, read a book, recited something from _Lays_ – I still remember most of it. But I couldn’t. My throat, my voice – I just…” He raises his head and looks at her, the blue of his eyes made very vivid by unshed tears. 

“All I could think was: Why am I here now? To be with him for a few hours before he dies? What good is that? Why couldn’t I have been able to help him before he lost his license, before he broke up with Mum, when he started drinking? And… why couldn’t he have been there for me when I needed him?” Morse’s voice breaks and he turns away, raising a hand to his face to hide his eyes.

In her chest Joan’s heart curls inwards, painfully tight, as though trying to crush itself. She doesn’t trust herself to speak, instead rises from her seat and in one step bridges the distance between them, putting her arms carefully around his shoulders. Morse stiffens but doesn’t pull away, still wiping at his eyes. 

“What a pathetic performance. I’m –”

“If you’re going to apologize,” breaks in Joan curtly, voice rough, “don’t.” 

Morse swallows. After a few beats he then turns to look at her with his head on a slant, eyes red but mouth raised in a very weak smile. “You’re quite a lot like your father,” he announces out of nowhere. Joan blinks, nonplussed, and he pulls away. She sits back, still staring.

“You really know how to flatter a girl,” she manages.

“In this case, I would accept it. He’s the best man I know.” There’s something simultaneously a little charming but also very irritating in the way he comes out with intensely sincere statements like this one. 

She doesn’t have the chance to be irked by it, though, as a moment later Morse pushes back his chair and stands, a little unevenly. He’s looking very pasty, and he holds on to the back of the chair either for support or balance as he stands. “I think I need to lie down for a while.” Definitely still hung over, possibly still even a bit drunk. He must have been hitting it hard last night.

Joan nods, also standing. “Do you want a cool cloth, or some ice?” Morse hesitates, which is enough. “Where are the cloths?” 

“Beneath the sink. Thanks.” He crosses the flat towards the partially divided bedroom, still with a pronounced limp. Joan finds a cloth and runs the water until it’s icy – not very long – then follows. 

Morse’s bed would never have passed muster in the Thursday household; loose sheets, no pillowcase, coverless duvet. Morse is lying on his back, eyes already closed, breathing hard – still in his suit; Joan bites back a comment. There’s an empty glass on the tiny table by his bed, along with a few bottles of medication. There are no photographs, and now that she thinks of it, nor were there any anywhere else in the flat. She looks down at the young man lying in yesterday’s rumpled clothes on an unmade bed, and wonders how a thermos of soup could ever be enough. 

“Here you are,” she says quietly, putting it on his forehead. He makes a soft noise but doesn’t open his eyes. 

“Morse? I’m sorry about your father. Even if – despite everything, it’s obvious you cared for him – of course you did… Morse?”

There’s just the sound of Morse’s breathing, slow and slightly nasal – asleep. Joan sighs. “I guess I’ll just see myself out, then.” 

\--------------------------------------------------

For the first time, there’s a bittersweetness about coming home, opening the door into a warm house smelling of savoury stew. The radio’s on in the dining room, in the kitchen, Mum and Dad are talking in pleasant tones. The contrast couldn’t be sharper to the cold, dark flat she just left. Joan kicks off her shoes and creeps upstairs, seeing Dad poke his head around the kitchen doorway but not stopping. 

Up in her room she sits down on her bed, pulling the duvet up to cover her feet and draws her knees up against her chest until she feels tight and secure and warm – an independent strength she’s giving herself. She sits there staring at the far wall trying to imagine a lonely little boy and his father, growing apart without meaning to day by day, week by week. Desperation and need aren’t enough to make a family.

A soft knock comes at the door and Dad slips in. He pauses for a moment and then comes to sit down next to her. “Budge up,” he says, and pushes her over a bit to make room for himself at the foot of her bed. He smells of rosemary and cooking sherry; Mum’s been putting him to work and offering stingy rewards. 

They sit in silent for more than a minute, listening to the quiet hum of the radio and a cooking spoon banging against a saucepan. 

Then: “I don’t think I helped much,” says Joan, to the floor. “Actually, I think I made it worse. He’s all … sharp, brittle pieces inside, and I don’t think he knows how to stop cutting himself on them. He kept answering my questions – _you_ never do – and I didn’t realise until too late that it was hurting him, and then he couldn’t seem to stop and it was just very sad and awful. And he’s hurt – really hurt, I mean. Why didn’t you tell me he’d been shot?” She looks across at him; Dad stares back from behind a suddenly-assumed shield of professional impassivity.

“It’s his business, and in any case it’s not serious. He’ll be back on duty soon enough; desk work to start, of course.”

Joan shakes her head. “You should have told us.”

“Work stays –”

“Is that all he is? Work? You thought I was going out with him, for God’s sake!” she snaps, fingers twisting deeply into the duvet covering her feet. Dad stiffens slightly, withdrawing even further into his work persona.

“And I assumed he would tell you what he wanted to. What’s this got –”

“You killed someone for him,” she says quietly, and he goes very still. She’s overreaching herself and she knows it, but she can’t stop now because even in this warm house suffused with love she can feel the empty cold of Morse’s flat wrapped around her like a shroud. “He told me. He didn’t mean to, didn’t say it was you, but I knew.” 

Her heart is hammering in her chest, throat beginning to choke up now. “How can he mean so much to you, and you won’t even talk about him? Even now, when he doesn’t have anyone else –” her throat closes up, tears overwhelming her. She stands abruptly, almost tripping over the covers, and takes several swift steps across the room to try to escape the sudden heat smouldering beneath her skin. 

Dad comes up behind her and pulls her into a tight embrace; for a minute she stands aloof, then turns into it, burying her head in his shoulder. He strokes her hair, speaking softly. “There, love. It’s alright. I’m sorry. Shh.”

She comes to a sniffling, hiccoughing stop after a couple of minutes, wiping her face with her sleeve and ignoring Dad’s half-exasperated look. “You would do it too,” she tells him, voice nearly unrecognisable. 

“I’ll take your word for it.” He walks them awkwardly back to the bed without releasing her, like a parent teaching a stiff child to dance, and sits them down. “I stopped talking about work at home long time ago, back when we were in London. You won’t remember. Partly it was to do with professionalism, and safety – you two were young, and I couldn’t chance you repeating things you might hear. And you don’t need to be hearing about what goes on down the nick anyway,” he adds, with a little of his usual over-the-top disapproval. 

Joan’s turned to stare; Dad’s never talked about this – rarely mentions London in the context of work. He’s watching her with quiet eyes now. “Partly it was for me, though. My cases are cruel, raw and violent; many of the people I deal with more so. I need somewhere to come home to that’s separate from that; somewhere safe. That’s why we leave work on the hall table.” 

“Morse said you wanted to protect us, protect our family,” she says.

He sighs. “Coppers either learn to find something safe, something the darkness of the job can’t taint, or they go under. And even if they find something, if they don’t keep the job away from their families, they end up losing them more often than not.”

“Can’t you let anyone in, even a little? Can’t someone be a friend and a copper?” she demands, irritated by the seemingly Machiavellian nature of this system. 

“That’s easy, love; I’ve plenty and you know most of them. But a copper and family – that’s dangerous.”

“Why? It’s obvious how much you think of him, and he practically worships you. It’s not as though it’s a habit; when was the last time you thought anything of any of your bagmen?”

“A lad named Mickey Carter. He died – badly.” Dad closes his eyes and rests his chin on the crown of her head. “Fifteen years is a long time to be afraid,” he says, consideringly.

Joan finds herself biting her lip, hands twisted tightly in Dad’s pull-over.

“I don’t say I’ll change the rules, because I won’t,” he says, after what seems like a very long silence, releasing her and pulling himself up to his true height. He runs a hand through his hair, returning it to some semblance of order and probably leaving it smelling of rosemary. “Work stays on the hall table, where it’s always been. But perhaps I could consider making an occasional exception for Morse, given that I have more or less brought him into the family. Do not take that as permission for anything untoward,” he adds, frowning reprovingly. 

She smacks his arm. “Dad!” she hisses, without heat. She straightens, dropping the indignation. “Thank you,” she says, more seriously, only partially aware of what this must be costing him. She doubts she’ll ever hear more about Mickey Carter, and for once isn’t sure she wants to. 

“You might go see Morse. Soon,” she suggests instead, turning her thoughts away from something terrible enough to frighten even Dad.

“Might I?” he asks, standing, and she can tell from his tone that he was already intending to. She nods all the same. “Then I suppose I will.”

Joan smiles faintly. “Good. He needs it.” 

END

Title from Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H."

_Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,_  
 _The tender blossom flutter down,_  
 _Unloved, that beech will gather brown,_  
 _This maple burn itself away._


End file.
